Amusement rides injure 4,000 kids each year, study finds

Wednesday

May 1, 2013 at 12:01 AMMay 2, 2013 at 10:36 AM

As summer draws near, students will soon be freed from the confines of their classrooms and flock toward amusement parks, festivals and fairs. But what they and their parents might not know is that more than 4,000 children throughout the country visit emergency rooms every year for treatment of injuries linked to amusement rides, according to a study by researchers from the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital.

Ryan Clark, The Columbus Dispatch

As summer draws near, children will soon be freed from classrooms and will flock to amusement parks, festivals and fairs. But what they and their parents might not know is that more than 4,000 children nationwide visit emergency rooms each year because of injuries on amusement rides, according to a study released yesterday by researchers from the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

The study estimated that 92,885 children younger than 18 were injured between 1990 and 2010. It did not include injuries from inflatable rides, such as bounce houses, or from water parks. About 70 percent of the injuries occurred annually between May and September, when children generally are not in school.

But in Ohio, ride owners, manufacturers and state inspectors work throughout the year to try to prevent injuries. Some experts say the state has one of the best amusement-ride safety programs in the country. Others say more is needed, such as federal oversight.Researchers wanted to take a better look at amusement-ride injuries because little detailed information was available, said Dr. Gary Smith, senior author of the study and director of the center at Children’s.

The study found that head and neck injuries were the most common and that falling in, on, off or against a ride was the most-common way injuries occurred.

Rides at amusement parks such as Kings Island and Cedar Point were responsible for about 34 percent of the injuries nationwide. Mobile rides typically found at carnivals and fairs accounted for about 29 percent of injuries, and about 12 percent occurred on rides at malls, stores, restaurants or arcades. The location was not known in the remaining cases, partly because of incomplete records.

Ohio has about 3,900 fixed and mobile rides that are inspected annually by the state’s Division of Amusement Ride Safety, which is part of the Ohio Department of Agriculture. It also inspects inflatable rides and water parks. But rides in malls and stores, such as coin-operated rides and mini-trains, are not inspected.

“You typically hear about injuries on roller coasters and the big rides, but we knew there was a much bigger picture,” Smith said. “A lot of children get injured at carnivals, local arcades and on coin-operated rides.”

The study used data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, which provides information about injuries treated in a selection of hospital emergency rooms throughout the country. Researchers used that data to estimate total injuries.

Injuries treated in locations other than emergency rooms, such as urgent-care centers, would not have been counted.

The study’s limitations emphasize the need to have a national group collect data and create and enforce standards for rides throughout the country, Smith said.

In Ohio, for instance, only injuries that require an overnight stay in a hospital are investigated by the state and made public. Records of other injuries — from scraped knees to broken bones — are kept by the ride owners.

Industry groups and manufacturers often will share information with one another about problems and how to prevent them, but federal oversight is needed, said Ken Martin, an industry consultant and inspector in Richmond, Va.

“We all need to be singing the same hymn, on the same verse and to the same beat,” Martin said. “ It’s a shame because the public suffers.”

The lack of public information about amusement-ride accidents has motivated some people to create websites — including rideaccidents.com and saferparks.org — to share information about ride safety.

Smith said the Children’s study also was intended to educate people.

For example, about three-quarters of injuries on mall rides occurred because children fell off them, the study found. That information can be used to prevent future injuries by installing better restraints or putting padding around the rides, he said.

“Overall, rides are safe,” Smith said. “But I think we can do much better.”

Industry experts say safety is their priority. The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions estimates that the odds of being seriously injured on a ride are 1 in 24 mil-lion. Almost 300 million people visit the 400-some amusement parks in the nation and take almost 2 billion safe rides every year, the association says.

“You take more of a risk in your car driving on the freeway to Cedar Point than you do riding a ride at Cedar Point,” said Monty Jasper, the corporate vice president of safety and engineering at Cedar Fairs Entertainment Co., which owns the Sandusky park and also Kings Island.The industry is motivated to ensure safety for riders because people won’t spend their money if the rides aren’t safe, Jasper said. “If we get in trouble, the market will punish us. The legal system will punish us. The state sometimes is a lesser of our worries.”

Ohio’s amusement-ride safety division investigated seven serious injuries from amusement rides in Ohio last year. The ratio of registered rides to serious accidents is “minimal,” said Mike Vartorella, the assistant chief of the division and chief state inspector.

“Any injury is one too many,” said Bill Avery, an industry consultant and inspector from Maitland, Fla. “The person riding to the hospital doesn’t care about the statistics.”

But injuries will always be part of amusement rides because the rides are mechanical and operated by people who make mistakes, Avery said. “Nothing is really truly safe, only reasonably safe. And the numbers show me the industry is reasonably safe.”

In Ohio, amusement-ride owners and manufacturers and state inspectors work together to ensure rider safety.

When designing a ride, engineers ensure that restraints will keep people in their seats and that acceleration and other forces are within safe levels.

Owners inspect rides daily, and state officials inspect every ride at least once a year.

At Kings Island in Mason, for example, state workers inspected the Beast on April 18 before the park opened on April 27. They checked all the roller coaster’s wooden supports and walked the more than 7,000 feet of track looking for imperfections in the metal track or the boards that support it.

Inspectors also check to make sure the ride meets its manufacturer’s specifications.If problems are found, the ride cannot open until they are fixed and the division is notified. However, inspectors do not recheck the ride after repairs have been completed.

Kings Island’s maintenance crews also inspect every ride daily before the park opens, said Doug Kramer, who is the head of fire and safety for the park and chairman of the state’s advisory board to the Division of Amusement Ride Safety.

“It’s not like we flip a switch on in the morning and are ready to ride,” Kramer said.

Ryan Clark is a fellow in Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism Statehouse News Bureau.

ryanclark@dispatch.com

@RyanGClark

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